Uber Eats Will Begin Using Nuro Delivery Robots (autoweek.com) 20
Autonomous tech developer Nuro is teaming up with Uber Eats in a long-awaited partnership that will see the company's latest robot take over the delivery of food to app users. Autoweek reports: The two companies signed a 10-year contract just a few days ago, paving the way for a wider rollout of Nuro's driverless delivery robots, which have been operating on a limited scale in several cities. The partnership will kick off slowly, with Nuro deploying its robots to Houston and Mountain View, California, as a start, before the service makes a wider debut in the Bay Area.
Perhaps more importantly, Nuro's delivery robots will allow Uber Eats to not have to pay a human driver, which is something that company has been working toward for years as part of its primary business as well. However, the lagging development of Level 4 and Level 5 autonomy, once widely expected to arrive around 2020, had stalled ambitions for Uber, which has struggled with profitability through normal operations with independent contractor drivers. Nuro delivery robots enjoyed renewed interest from business partners in the early months of the pandemic, but the company's technology is now being viewed as a cost saver for operators rather than a method of more sanitary delivery.
Of course, a limited rollout in two cities plus plans to launch in the Bay Area won't transform Uber Eats' business model overnight. This could take years even with an unlimited supply of Nuro delivery robots -- with regulatory approval still being the major impediment. That's because commercial driverless permits are granted on a state-by-state basis, in addition to city and county approvals, which were hard enough for Nuro to obtain in the Bay Area, where Level 4 robotaxis are being tested. Nuro will need to focus its efforts in those areas where traffic is suitable for its robots.
Perhaps more importantly, Nuro's delivery robots will allow Uber Eats to not have to pay a human driver, which is something that company has been working toward for years as part of its primary business as well. However, the lagging development of Level 4 and Level 5 autonomy, once widely expected to arrive around 2020, had stalled ambitions for Uber, which has struggled with profitability through normal operations with independent contractor drivers. Nuro delivery robots enjoyed renewed interest from business partners in the early months of the pandemic, but the company's technology is now being viewed as a cost saver for operators rather than a method of more sanitary delivery.
Of course, a limited rollout in two cities plus plans to launch in the Bay Area won't transform Uber Eats' business model overnight. This could take years even with an unlimited supply of Nuro delivery robots -- with regulatory approval still being the major impediment. That's because commercial driverless permits are granted on a state-by-state basis, in addition to city and county approvals, which were hard enough for Nuro to obtain in the Bay Area, where Level 4 robotaxis are being tested. Nuro will need to focus its efforts in those areas where traffic is suitable for its robots.
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Nuro's delivery robots will allow Uber Eats to not have to pay a human driver, which is something that company has been working toward for years as part of its primary business
Yes, let's spend many tens of millions of dollars millions on robots so we can eliminate a few minimum wage delivery drivers.
Truly brilliant business plan.
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Coincidence (Score:5, Informative)
"Uber Eats Will Begin Using Nuro Delivery Robots "
The local criminals will begin selling Nuro Delivery Robot parts.
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Baltimore is alive with anticipation.
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Isaac Asimov predicted anti-robot violence all the way back in 1953's Caves Of Steel [wikipedia.org] where, among others, a robotic police assistant named "Sammy" was vandalized by discontented humans. Sammy in that novel is a crude caricature of a black servant, referred to as "boy" etc.
The next step in his pseudo-history was to perfect humanoid-seeming robots (probably the inspiration for Cylons and the like).
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Door (Score:3)
Judge Dredd FTW (Score:2)
"Eat Recycled Food..." is now closer than ever.
And their leverage vs. the vendor? (Score:3)
Uber likes to make noise about how its profitability problems are just a byproduct of pesky humans who will be automated away Real Soon Now(tM); but, if anything, they are likely to find that their negotiating position vs. more or less fungible day laborers is vastly stronger than their position vs. outfits they are depending on for deeply nontrivial and/or patent-laden tech that they have largely failed to develop in house.
Last I checked people with an app and some payment processing are rather more common than people with comparatively mature autonomous vehicles; it will be interesting to see if this is reflected in which partner ends up capturing most of the margins on a given delivery.
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It's probably less about human drivers, and more about just getting deliveries done.
Drivers are paid and tipped and many times drivers decline work because it pays too little to justify them making the trip. This results in customers who either don't get food at all, or it just gets cold until someone eventually comes around to get it, or it gets tossed in the trash.
There are MANY examples of fast food joints like Mc
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It's certainly possible that the robots are just plain cheaper, in which case the floor for what qualifies as an excessively low bid will go down; but the same choice is at work: If you want reliable delivery the solution is simple enough, and looks essentially the same in humans or bots. Delivery isn't unreliable today because of some defect of human nature, it's unrel
Do you tip a robot? (Score:2)
Re:Do you tip a robot? (Score:5, Funny)
Compensating for decades of... (Score:2)
US cities & suburbs are so poorly planned that people have to drive several Kms just to go to a school, supermarket, convenience store, café, restaurant, etc.. With few exceptions, day to day stuff is infeasibly far to walk to on a regular basis & so Americans drive everywhere, all the time. Large percentages of land
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more reason (Score:2)
more reason to get out of the cities. totally unliveable.